SAN DIEGO — CBS 8 has obtained transcripts of secret sidebar hearings conducted behind closed doors during Larry Millete’s preliminary hearing.
The public was not allowed to hear the private conversations, which took place between the judge and the attorneys during the 10-day prelim.
The transcripts revealed the judge and attorneys spoke openly about the most controversial evidence in the case against Millete, who is accused of murdering his wife, Maya Millete, in January 2021.
From day one of the hearing, prosecutor Christy Bowles frequently objected to cross examination questioning by defense attorney, Bonita Martinez. Many objections were made publicly in open court. Others were discussed in private, during secret sidebar conversations.
Nine of the sidebar hearings were “on the record,” meaning they were transcribed by a court reporter.
On January 18 – following a 25-minute secret sidebar hearing – CBS 8 stood up in court and objected to the public being excluded. Judge Dwayne Moring responded that transcripts of the sidebar conversations would be available after the conclusion of the preliminary hearing.
The prelim ended on January 25, when Judge Moring ruled there was sufficient evidence for Millete to stand trial on one count of murder, and one count of illegal possession of an assault rifle.
CBS 8 purchased transcripts of the sidebar hearings from three court reporters who worked the preliminary hearing.
The first sidebar conference dealt with blood found in Maya Millete's master bathroom. The blood evidence came out during cross examination questioning by the defense.
“Did you see any evidence of any blood splatter inside the house?” defense attorney Bonita Martinez asked a Chula Vista forensic specialist on the witness stand in open court.
“Yes,” the specialist, David Garber, responded.
The judge then called a secret sidebar conference with the two attorneys on January 12 at 9:28 a.m., where Deputy District Attorney Bowles objected:
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Ms. Bowles:
Your honor. I just wanted to go sidebar to clarify some things. I didn't want to do this as a speaking objection; However, there was a blood collection in the bathroom. The blood was tested. It is not May Millete's blood. There is no Blood evidence that I am presenting as part of my preliminary hearing evidence. So my position is that this is just sort of a discovery expedition on the part of defense, and that is why it is beyond the scope. I am also – you know, I don't want to leave some kind of implication. I will try to clean up some things on redirect and have a detective testify about the actual seizure. This person is just a collector and documenter of the evidence and has been asked about blood in the bathroom. And, again, I think the implication has been left that it is somehow probative of Mr. Millete's guilt; however, it was tested by the sheriff's department and it is -- although it is female blood, it is not Ms. Millete's Blood. So, again, not part of my evidence. And so that is why my objection to this whole line of questions is beyond the scope.
Ms. Martinez:
Your honor, during her direct examination, she had this witness testify about his opinion about the makeup that was there in the bathroom, asked him about whether May Millete could have taken part of or some of this makeup. She also asked the witness about the clothing in the bedroom and his opinion about whether Ms. Millete took the clothes.
Judge Moring:
What does this have to do with the blood?
Ms. Martinez:
I want to make sure it was the negative blood that counsel is claiming.
Judge Moring:
Counsel, you opened the door to that issue. She did not say anything. She did not elicit testimony about blood evidence, and you opened the door. And now you are attempting to ask additional questions in that regard. I am going to sustain the objection. Now you have opened up the issue, and so Ms. Bowles has to clean it up, I think with a different witness.
Ms. Bowles:
I am going to clarify that he is not the person who submits it for testing; that it is the detective, just so that is clear. And I have a couple of additional photographs to show him. But, yeah, other than that, I will not get into a whole discussion about the swabs or the DNA…
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Judge Moring again sustained the objection and instructed Martinez to “move on.”
Another secret sidebar, on January 13 at 9:06 a.m., concerned Maya Millete allegedly drinking during a family trip to Parker Dam in Arizona:
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Judge Moring:
Counsel, I think it is important to limit the questions. I don't see the relevance to how many people were on the trip and certain other questions that you are asking, and this is just going to drag out. and I don't see the relevance. You are free to object more, if you think that there is a lack of relevance to the questions.
Ms. Bowles:
I was waiting to see where it was going, because I wasn't sure. But I plan to object more to kind of -- this is a probable cause hearing, and I understand I put in a lot of background and did bring out some of the information. And to that extent, there is relevance to cross-examination. She is welcome to question about that. But I am planning to object more today to limit the scope.
Ms. Martinez:
You are -- yes, counsel is right. She covered a lot of areas yesterday, and I just wanted the clarification on this trips, because, in particular, the Parker Dam trip was really worrisome because the witness, my client's wife, and the witness's husband had left the children in the trailer, and they went to a bar, a floating bar, and were there until early morning hours drinking. And it is a potential that my client was not with them and he didn't know that they were going to do that. And, you know, there is allegations that she is drinking excessively alcohol in the late hours in the evening and come back in the morning. And that is –
Judge Moring:
Counsel, if that is your point, then I would prefer that you get to it in five questions instead of 20 questions.
Ms. Martinez:
All right, your honor.
Judge Moring:
If you want to impeach the character of her being this loving mother by evidence that she was out drinking and left the kids unattended, fine. But I don't need to know all of the people on the trip. I mean, I just want it to be streamlined. And you can get to the point, if that is the point you want to raise.
Ms. Martinez:
I tried to limit my cross-examination to streamline more. I just didn't want to not establish that she didn't know about it. I just wanted to make sure that she has knowledge about it.
Judge Moring:
Well, we don't have all day to get to it.
Ms. Martinez:
Okay.
Judge Moring:
This witness was on all afternoon and most of the morning yesterday, if I recall. So we have – you have three of the siblings you were going to call yesterday, and we didn't even get through one.
Ms. Bowles:
And, I mean, I would object to -- to the relevance of whether or not she was drinking at a bar on a vacation. You know, I don't even know exactly when this trip was. I think it was in 2020, but I don't know if we established when exactly it was. But whether or not May went out drinking with her sister is irrelevant, and I think this is part of kind of Larry's fixation. But I will submit to the court about the relevance of it. But I definitely agree it should be streamlined.
Judge Moring:
I'll let you get in and out of the topic, but I will not let you spend a lot of time getting there.
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Another lengthy sidebar, on January 13 at 3:38 p.m., dealt with an alleged affair Maya was having with a co-worker:
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Ms. Martinez:
She wanted to leave him. But she would not admit to this extramarital affair of this young co-worker that she was training. She was the supervisor of this person, and it was, in fact, disseminated in the entire, you know, the SWRMC, their offices in the naval hospital.
Judge Moring:
Well, counsel, how is it relevant to that witness, her brother testifying?
Ms. Martinez:
Well, I believe, your honor, he understood the reason. He says he did. And so in the lies that he was referring to is actually that Ms. Millete continued to deny it, and that is what the issue was for her -- deny, deny, deny. Even though she had already admitted to Mr. Millete about the affair, she still would deny it to her own family. And so his own -- Ms. Millete's family thought that Mr. Millete was abusive when, you know, he was trying to track her, follow her, and trying to find out where she is, because she kept saying, "No. no. I am not having an affair with anybody," when, in fact, Ms. Millete already admitted it to the husband. And so it is really a big, big misunderstanding and a cover-up with the affair. And they're mad at him for treating her -- like, you are abusing her because you are calling and calling her and following, following her.
Judge Moring:
Ms. Bowles?
Ms. Bowles:
Whether or not Jay-R is -- well, first of all, he testified that he didn't really -- he has no knowledge of what was going on with any internal investigation. In fact, he said that Larry said part of the fight was recognizing the issue he was going to reopen some kind of investigation, and Jay-R said he didn't know anything about that. Whether or not her family -- her family is not alleging anything about whether or not, in fact, her family is actually -- he testified that he believed Larry. He just noted that it seemed odd that he was tracking her. They were not -- there is not some kind of campaign that they had against him. There is no evidence that they were -- that they believed that he was being abusive. In fact, it is kind of the opposite. And there is no evidence that Jay-R or her family knew the details of any kind of investigation going on at her former employer. In fact, everything is that May was being very private with her family and not telling them anything. To the extent there is impeachment because May denied to them she had some kind of an affair and it is going to be part of the evidence that she did have an affair, okay. But whether or not her family, Jay-R, knew anything about this investigation is irrelevant, and I don't think there is any evidence that he does.
Judge Moring:
Okay. I do not find this line of questioning with that witness to be relevant so I will sustain my own relevance objection.
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Keep in mind, there was no jury during Millete’s preliminary hearing. So, the judge apparently called these secret sidebars to keep highly prejudicial information, as well as private information, out of the public realm.
Another sidebar followed testimony in open court from a Chula Vista police officer, who said on the witness stand, “May was so in fear for her safety that she locked herself in a bathroom, but Mr. Millete punched through drywall that was next to the bathroom door.”
The secret sidebar was called on January 18 at 9:20 a.m.:
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Ms. Martinez:
Well, I -- I think this case, based on my investigation of this case, she has a plan to, in fact, blame it all on Mr. Millete. She has a clear, organized plan of setting him up because she made a statement that if she left Mr. Millete, he would never see his children again, and that's -- is in the evidence. It shows that from the time that she told Mr. Millete that she wanted to separate or divorce him, January 2020, she already had a plan to leave Mr. Millete, and the issue of child custody and child support had been in her mind since January 2020; so she planted and stated all those negative stories about Mr. Millete's physical violence or abusiveness to her friends and her relatives, when, in fact, you heard all the relatives, they never saw any physical violence.
Judge Moring:
All right. So that goes to your theory of the case. Two questions: one, how are you going to prove what you've just stated? And two, why isn't your argument simply going to the weight I should give it and not the admissibility? Just because you disagree with the statement doesn't mean it shouldn't come into evidence.
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During the same sidebar conference on January 18, the judge admonished defense attorney Martinez for not doing her homework:
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Judge Moring:
Counsel, this case is voluminous and there is a lot of discovery and you just need to be on top of it. If you're going to be representing him and doing a job – a competent job, then you just need to make sure that you have a mastery of the evidence and you've got to anticipate what is going to come in. And you've had this case for quite a while. We were supposed to do this preliminary hearing a year ago. I don't know if you had the discovery a year ago because apparently some of the discovery is coming in on a rolling basis, but if you had -- if you've had this for a year, you should be on top of it.
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Another sidebar involved testimony that Larry Millete had claimed in a police interview that his wife was “bleeding profusely” in the Summer of 2020, and that the husband had driven Maya Millete to the hospital.
The secret sidebar was called on January 23 at 11:05 a.m.:
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Ms. Bowles:
So my objection, your Honor, I think what Ms, Martinez is referring to was a time during the summer that the defendant discovered that Ms. Millete had had an abortion. She was bleeding because of complications from the abortion, and I don't think it's relevant with this witness. I would -- I think it's going to end up being part of motive, so I don't think the fact of it occurring is going to be -- I'm not going to object to it coming out because I think unfortunately it is part of the motive because the defendant makes many, many references to it when he communicates with his spellcasters, which we are going to be hearing about through my investigator, but I think in terms of this witness's testimony, it's coming from the defendant to the detective that he discovered that she had been bleeding and had to take her to the hospital. I don't think it's relevant. To the extent there's been some questioning about her health, I think the insinuation has been through the defendant that she was suffering from some sort of mental health issues, so to the extent there was some questioning about the detective's knowledge of any, you know, information that he had that she had mental health problems or some significant health problem, I would say -- I wouldn't object to that question, but I think this is just an attempt to try to malign Ms. Millete and bring out very private details of her life that, again, are not relevant in terms of this cross-examination.
Judge Moring:
Okay. Because you believe that this -- well, the evidence has come in through this witness based on declarations of the defendant.
Ms. Bowles:
Correct. The defendant told the detective that he had to help his wife because she had some bleeding, and I think that's where cross is going. Whether or not the defendant told the detective that he had to help her because she was bleeding is irrelevant. There's no relevance to it. It wasn't asked on direct, so it's beyond the scope, and to go into the details of the fact of what occurred in terms of her decisions and any sort of medical -- the details of the medical procedure itself are irrelevant.
Judge Moring:
What is the relevance?
Ms. Martinez:
Yes, your Honor, the position of the defense, your Honor, is the fact that this husband, Mr. Millete, did only good things to Ms. Millete. He not only picked up her when she was so intoxicated and drunk in the bars, she went –
Judge Moring:
Counsel, let's focus on the bleeding incident. What is the relevance of that?
Ms. Martinez:
The relevance is to show that Mr. Millete could not have killed Ms. Millete because he wants to save her. She's bleeding profusely. He could have just let her die, in fact, if he wants her dead, but, no, he -- nobody took her. It was after she left him for two months, she returns to him and then now she's bleeding and have been having sex with this boyfriend. You have Mr. Millete not angry and takes her to the doctor even though he did not retaliate, he did not snap.
Judge Moring:
Okay.
Ms. Martinez:
And their claim is that he snapped and he didn't snap.
Ms. Bowles:
Well, there's also going to be a lot of evidence that he was asking spellcasters to keep her sick and incapacitated, so the fact that she was sick is --
Judge Moring:
Are you going to be introducing any information that talks about an abortion?
Ms. Bowles:
Yes. Unfortunately, it will be coming in through the e-mails because the defendant -- it was a huge point of contention for him, and it is part of evidence of our motive.
Judge Moring:
Okay.
Ms. Bowles:
But, again, whether or not – I mean, she was bleeding, and -- I mean, the fact that he cares for her because she was bleeding, I don't see the relevance of that. She could just ask, you know, did -- and this detective doesn't have personal knowledge. It goes back to the defendant told you on prior occasions he's cared for her when she's been sick.
Judge Moring:
Well, it's Prop. 115 and there's statements that the defendant made that are admissible.
Ms. Bowles:
And so if we get to the actual, "The defendant told you this," then fine, that's a different thing, but we keep getting into, "Your investigation has revealed that," or "It's your knowledge that this occurred," that's not accurate.
Ms. Martinez:
It's not only Mr. Millete who told the detective about the abortion, about the controlling, about the love that this man has for Ms. Millete.
Judge Moring:
Well, Counsel, I am going to allow you to ask the question. You have to phrase it correctly. You can ask that detective if the defendant told him about an occasion where May had been bleeding profusely and Larry believed it was because she had an abortion, and I guess it would be 1250 if she says, "I had an abortion and that's why I'm bleeding," so May's statement to Larry would be admissible and Larry's statement is admissible, so that covers our double hearsay. So you can ask the detective about that incident, if Larry said she's bleeding profusely because she told him she had an abortion and he took her to the hospital. That's the relevance and that's all I'm going to allow…
Judge Moring:
… So limited questions on the scope of that incident where he took her to the hospital because she told him she was bleeding and it was because she had an abortion.
Ms. Martinez:
Okay.
Judge Moring:
That's admissible --
Ms. Martinez:
Okay.
Judge Moring:
-- for the most part.
Ms. Martinez:
And the fact that she had not only one but several.
Judge Moring:
Well, I'm only going to allow questions in a certain format pursuant to the Code, and I still pertain this question to limit the scope of those types of questions.
Ms. Martinez:
Okay.
Judge Moring:
And I agree with the prosecution. The private facts, they're coming out, but I don't want to malign the character of the victim disrespectfully.
Ms. Martinez:
Your Honor, it's not my intention to do that, and, in fact, my client does not wish to destroy her reputation or her image because that's the reason why this case is going so slow because he doesn't want to state anything that would hurt Ms. Millete's reputation. He is protecting Ms. Millete from the beginning.
Judge Moring:
Well, I've given you the structure as to the questions. Get in and get out.
Ms. Bowles:
I would take issue with that, but that's for argument.
Judge Moring:
I'm not sealing this. It will not be sealed. This concludes the sidebar.
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Larry Millete will be back in court on March 22. His murder trial is set to begin in September.
Editor's note: California Gov Code 69954(d) prohibits the copying of purchased court transcripts and posting those pages on the internet as PDFs.
WATCH RELATED: Could a plea bargain lead to Maya Millete being found? (Jan. 2023).
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